July 23, 2023

Hit and Miss #307: The internet is good, actually?

Hello!

Writing after an unexpectedly full weekend, tired but thankfully not drained:

• Yesterday morning was an awesome hand tools course at Ottawa City Woodshop (great fun, dicing up a pine board with a long list of tools).
• This morning and afternoon was spent securing a very-nice-but-has-tricky-physics set of shelves to our how-in-the-world-did-they-build-this apartment wall.
• This evening with a host of friends, new and old alike, whiled away in Strathcona Park (itself an old friend), eating and catching up and blind contour drawing and the like.

Our get together was to celebrate a host of July birthdays, a lively and lovely way to enjoy a summer night. (A was unimpressed with the lateness of his dinner, but that cat’s stomach runs on a 22-hour clock or something).

Now for a run of links, before winding down for rest! (I hope you’re already resting, or on your way to resting, or have rested, by the time you read this. Really, I just wish you rest.)

• Yes to friends at work, yes to keeping those friends even as the work changes.
• Really enjoyed Melissa Gira Grant’s description of her writing process (being a perpetual sucker for writing about writing).
• Loved Sameer’s description of the sounds of summer (and the bevy of links he shares thereafter). In particular, the little nod to taking out the headphones—I try to make a point of walking around without headphones, to notice and listen to the sounds around me (while also wrestling with and pining for a communal respect for silence).
• On the difficulty of preserving and accessing historical games (but also, check out this archive of playable Flash games). (All this reminds me of the ICON computer, for which Archives Ontario has extensive records, including software, but lacks working hardware with which to run any of the original programs.) Somehow, this great piece about life before cellphones feels relevant.
• Really enjoyed thinking about how taste (already a nebulous concept, informed by others as much as ourselves) is pressured and shaped by the demands of owning a property and of the home renovation industry, leading many who own their house, with theoretically the most freedom to customize their living arrangements, to converge on a common, uninteresting style, mostly to appeal to the market.
• Good book review of There Are No Accidents, calling for better designed programs and institutions such that people can “fail” and still keep living.

If this newsletter feels breathless, it’s because I’m about to have my zoomies or something. Hahahaha, okay, all the best for the week ahead!

Lucas